O'Reilly on Harvard's pledge of $50 million for faculty diversity: "Any woman who signs on to work at Harvard gets 100 pair of shoes ... because all women want shoes"

On his radio show, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and co-host E.D. Hill discussed Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers' May 16 announcement that the school would devote $50 million to "enhance the diversity of the faculty ranks," including "enhancements to the way women pursuing science and engineering are treated." O'Reilly claimed that "to make it even more enticing, they're gonna give women shoes, because all women want shoes, and that's where the money's going."

From the May 17 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor:

O'REILLY: Harvard, my alma mater, is going to spend $50 million to get more women on its faculty. Why don't they just have a dance?

HILL: You know --

O'REILLY: [laughing] Why don't they just have a mixer and have, you know, people come in and --

HILL: It's just -- it's sad, because --

O'REILLY: It is sad. It's a joke. Fifty million. Fifty million they're gonna spend to get more women --

HILL: How can it be that it would have to cost -- to spend $50 million to get qualified women to the nation's arguably top university?

O'REILLY: I'll tell you. Any woman who signs on to work at Harvard gets 100 pair of shoes. That's where the money's going.

HILL: I mean, really.

O'REILLY: That's one of the incentives.

HILL: But most people would want to work there. How could they need 50 million dollars to --

O'REILLY: Because to make it even more enticing, they're gonna give women shoes, because all women want shoes, and that's where the money's going. [laughing] If I said that at Harvard, I'd be fired immediately, right?